The traditional theory of price index numbers is based on the law of one price. But in the real world, we frequently observe the existence of an equilibrium price dispersion instead of one price of equilibrium. This article discusses the effects of price dispersion on two price indexes: the cost of living index and the consumer price index. With price dispersion and consumer searching for the lowest price, these indexes cannot be interpreted as deterministic indicators, but as stochastic indicators, and they can be biased if price dispersion is not taken into account. A measure for the bias of the consumer price index is proposed and the article ends with an estimation of the bias based on data obtained from the consumer price index calculated for the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, from January 1988 through December 2004. The period analysed is very interesting, because it exhibits different inflationary environments: high levels and high volatility of the rates of inflation with great price dispersion until July 1994 and low and relatively stable rates of inflation with prices less dispersed after August 1994.

Food price inflation not only threatens macroeconomic stability but also decreases the welfare levels of most households, especially the poorer ones, for whom food consumption constitutes a relatively large share of total expenditures. This report analyzes the causes and effects of food price inflation in South Asia during the period 2007?08 and beyond; simulates the impact of food price increases on household welfare and the potential of adjustments in consumer and producer behavior for mitigating the negative impact on welfare; and assesses the potential impact of regional trade liberalization on food prices. The appendixes describe the policy reactions of individual governments to the increases in food prices against the background of their respective domestic food policies. The focus is on wheat and rice, which are the main food staples in South Asia and together account for an important part of food expenditures of the poor. By analyzing the household?level impacts of the food crisis and taking stock of the policy responses of national governments...

The food commodity price increases beginning in 2001 and culminating in the food crisis of 2007/08 reflected a combination of several factors, including economic growth, biofuel expansion, exchange rate fluctuations, and energy price inflation. To quantify these influences, the authors developed an empirical model that also included crop inventory adjustments. The study shows that, if inventory effects are not taken into account, the impacts of the various factors on food commodity price inflation would be overestimated. If the analysis ignores crop inventory adjustments, it indicates that prices of corn, soybean, rapeseed, rice, and wheat would have been, respectively, 42, 38, 52, and 45 percent lower than the corresponding observed prices in 2007. If inventories are properly taken into account, the contributions of the above mentioned factors to those commodity prices are 36, 26, 26, and 35 percent, respectively. Those four factors, taken together, explain 70 percent of the price increase for corn, 55 percent for soybean...

Food price inflation in Brazil in the twelve months to June 2008 was 18 percent, while overall inflation was seven percent. Using spatially disaggregated monthly data on consumer prices and two different household surveys, we estimate the welfare consequences of these food price increases, and their distribution across households. Because Brazil is a large food producer, with a predominantly wage-earning agricultural labor force, our estimates include general equilibrium effects on market and transfer incomes, as well as the standard estimates of changes in consumer surplus. While the expenditure (or consumer surplus) effects were large, negative and markedly regressive everywhere, the market income effect was positive and progressive, particularly in rural areas. Because of this effect on the rural poor, and of the partial protection afforded by increases in two large social assistance benefits, the overall impact of higher food prices in Brazil was U-shaped, with middle-income groups suffering larger proportional losses than the very poor. Nevertheless...

Ethiopia has experienced a historically unprecedented increase in inflation, mainly driven by cereal price inflation, which is among the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using monthly data from the past decade, the authors estimate error correction models to identify the relative importance of several factors contributing to overall inflation and its three major components, cereal prices, food prices, and non-food prices. The main finding is that, in a longer perspective, over three to four years, the main factors that determine domestic food and non-food prices are the exchange rate and international food and goods prices. In the short run, agricultural supply shocks and inflation inertia strongly affect domestic inflation, causing large deviations from long-run price trends. Money supply growth does affect food price inflation in the short run, although the money stock itself does not seem to drive inflation. The results suggest the need for a multi-pronged approach to fight inflation. Forecast scenarios suggest monetary and exchange rate policies need to take into account cereal production...

This paper uses a computable general equilibrium model to assess the welfare impact of commodity price inflation in Tanzania and possible tax policy responses in the short, medium, and long term. The results suggest that global commodity inflation since 2006 may have had a significantly negative impact on all Tanzanian households. Most of the negative impact comes from the rise in the price of oil. In contrast, food price spikes are potentially welfare improving for all Tanzanian households in the medium to long run. In comparison with nonpoor households, poor households in Tanzania may be relatively shielded from global commodity inflation because they derive a larger share of their incomes from agricultural activity and consume less oil-intensive products. Finally, the results suggest that tax policies encouraging greater agricultural production and consumption may help to reduce poverty. In contrast, policies discouraging agricultural production (such as export bans) bear the risk of increasing poverty in the long run. However...

This report, Managing Food Price Risks and Instability in an Environment of Market Liberalization, studies the food price instability and risk problem in low-income countries and investigates the benefits and costs of alternative policy responses, and provides guidance on how to make the transition from state-dominated markets to private markets. The report concludes that problems of food price instability and food insecurity need to be addressed by developing: measures to improve overall productivity of food staples, measures to promote irrigation or crop diversification to reduce climate risks, improvements of the overall efficiency of markets, including investments in transport and communication infrastructure, storage, information systems, and market regulations. The report stresses that direct public interventions in food markets to manage food price risk should be a last resort. Specific policy recommendations are made to achieve these objectives.

Consumption baskets vary across households and inflation rates vary across goods. As a result, standard consumer price index (CPI) inflation may provide a misleading measure of the inflation actually faced by poor households, more so the more unequal the distribution of aggregate consumption across households. Likewise, changes in observed nominal consumption inequality may be very different from those in true inequality, that is, that measured using household-specific CPIs. The authors explore empirically these issues using household data covering nine episodes from four Latin American countries (Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru). They find that in these countries standard CPI inflation typically reflects the inflation rate faced by a rich consumer located in the 80 to 90 percentile of the distribution of consumption expenditure. In most episodes the authors also find that inflation was anti-rich-that is, the inflation faced by the richest consumers was higher than the inflation faced by the poorest consumers. As a result of this bias, the observed increases in nominal inequality generally exceed the actual changes in real inequality. These results are robust to correcting for quality change bias in the CPI, to the use of alternative price indices...

This paper presents new estimates of pass-through coefficients from international to domestic food prices by country in the Middle East and North Africa. The estimates indicate that, despite the use of food price subsidies and other government interventions, a rise in global food prices is transmitted to a significant degree into domestic food prices in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa, although cross-country variation is significant. In nearly all countries, domestic food prices are highly downwardly rigid. The finding of asymmetric price transmission suggests that not only international food price levels matter, but also food price volatility. High food pass-through tends to increase inflation pressures, where food consumption shares are high. Domestic factors, often linked to storage, logistics, and procurement, have also played a major role in explaining high food inflation in the majority of countries in the region.

Inflation in Bangladesh has increased from 1.9 percent in FY01 to 7.2 percent in FY06. The biggest increase was in food prices. Food price inflation increased from 1.4 percent in FY01 to 7.8 percent in FY06. By contrast, non-food price inflation only doubled during the same period. Food price inflation has been well above non-food inflation since FY04. The rise in food inflation could have resulted from developments in global commodity markets, particularly since FY05, increases in domestic production costs, and domestic demand. Inflation increased in most major world economies during FY06 following a surge in international commodity, energy and related fuel prices. The relationship between inflation and growth remains controversial both in theory and in empirics. The inflation-growth relationship for Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka none of these countries have had high inflation episodes in recent decades. Their analysis shows that growth rates and inflation rates for all four countries are co integrated...

The growing adoption of an inflation targeting framework in emerging market economies has increased the importance of understanding inflation dynamics and forecasting its future path in these countries. The author considers the case of Turkey and investigates the performance of models that have some theoretical foundations. To this end, his study focuses on mark-up models, monetary models, and the Phillips curve. The findings suggest that the mark-up models have the best in-sample performance followed by money gap models and the Phillips curve. The empirical results from out-of-sample forecasting performance for the period covering the new economic program (May 2001-December 2002), however, show that the Phillips curve and the money gap models perform better than mark-up models. These findings, in turn, imply that (1) Phillips curves augmented with the exchange rate and money models might provide complementary views in the Turkish context; and (2) the relative importance of output gap and monetary disequilibrium in the inflation process has increased under the floating exchange rate regime. The results underscore the importance of relying on multiple models of inflation in the conduct of Turkish monetary policy.

Emerging market economies (EMEs) have experienced a noticeable decline in inflation since the mid-1990s. Whether this stable price environment in EMEs is likely to endure and what kind of policies need to be followed to ensure price stability, however, still continue to be questions of considerable policy relevance. The authors investigate the factors associated with the start of 24 inflation episodes in 15 EMEs between 1980 and 2001. They use pooled probit analysis to estimate the contribution of the key factors to inflation starts. Their empirical results suggest that increases in the output gap, agricultural shocks, and expansionary fiscal policy raise the probability of inflation starts in EMEs. Their findings also indicate that a more democratic environment and an increase in capital flows relative to GDP reduce the probability of inflation starts.

The surge in global commodity prices of the past few years has presented a tremendous development challenge to South Asian countries. On a net basis South Asia is estimated to have suffered an income loss equivalent to some 9.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between January 2003 and April 2008. Although much of the income loss resulted from the hike in petroleum prices, the surge in food prices between January 2007 and April 2008, especially of staple food ? wheat and rice ? has created tremendous adverse social impact in South Asia. All countries have witnessed unprecedented surge in food prices, although India was able to limit this increase owing to good harvests and timely interventions using stock management and public food distribution. Net food importing countries like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have suffered the most from the food price crisis. The emerging global financial crisis is adding fuel to the fire, with expected future adverse consequences for macroeconomic balances and growth.

This study sheds some light on the challenges facing policy makers in Ethiopia, but much remains to be better understood. Over the past three years, food price inflation in Ethiopia has been persistently high, and overall inflation has been in double. While the spike in 2002 can be broadly explained by the drought-induced output shock that year, over the period as a whole, food price - and in particular grain price - trends present a puzzle in several respects. This is a serious concern for policy-makers, not least because the poor spend most of their income on food, and are adversely affected by rising prices. Even in rural areas, it is estimated that about half the population are net buyers of food. The issue of food price inflation has attracted rising concern in the national media and among policy makers, academics and of course the public at large, as well as among development partners. The structure of this note is as: authors review the key features of Ethiopian grain markets, before laying out a basic methodological approach to analyze the drivers of inflation...

Income growth in emerging economies has often been cited as a key driver of the past decade’s com-modity price boom—the longest and broadest boom since World War II. This paper shows that income has a negative and highly significant effect on real food commodity prices, a finding that is consistent with Engel’s Law and Kindleberger’s thesis, the predecessors of the Prebisch-Singer hypothe-sis. The paper also shows that, in the long run, income influences real food prices mainly through the manufacturing price channel (the deflator), hence weakening the view that income growth exerts strong upward pressure on food prices. Other (short-term) drivers of food prices include energy costs, inventories, and monetary conditions.

This report focuses on the impact of policies and exogenous shocks on food inflation. It deals with four elements: 1) the pass-through of global food (and other commodity) prices, 2) macroeconomic policies, 3) market regulation and short-term supply shocks, and 4) long-term structural shifts and the terms of trade between agriculture and other sectors of the economy. This report examines food and overall inflation trends in South Asia, which is experiencing relatively high inflation, and is home to a large number of poor. There are many more poor people who are net buyers of food than there are those who benefit from higher prices of agricultural products even in the predominantly rural countries of South Asia. The report examines both short-term and longer-term drivers of rising food prices in the region, including developments in international commodity prices, domestic supply shocks, accommodative demand side policies, structural changes in demand patterns, and long-term agricultural productivity trends. The impact on poverty is examined...

Growth in the Emerging East Asia region is expected to reach a little over 6 percent in 2005, down modestly from the exceptionally strong 7.2 percent pace of 2004. One of the clearly most fortunate developments of the last two years is the unexpectedly limited effect on economic growth of the more than doubling of crude oil prices. Several governments have had the political confidence and credibility with the public to implement politically sensitive cuts in or removal of subsidies on fuel products, allowing fuel users to respond more effectively to signals from world markets. Central banks in the region have also been tightening monetary policy to prevent the rise in oil prices and headline inflation from becoming embedded in higher trend rates of core price and wage inflation. While the tightening cycle may tend to moderate the cyclical recovery in domestic demand in the region in the near term, it will, by helping ensure moderate inflation and macroeconomic stability, also help promote more sustainable growth in the medium term. International trade has long been a great source of productivity gains and growth in East Asia. Last year's over 10 percent gain in world trade was paced by a 15-20 percent gain in East Asian real exports and imports. The Special Focus in this Update on What can East Asia Expect from the Doha Development Round? looks in more detail at the issues at stake for the region. Last but very far from least is the risk from avian influenza...

This paper examines whether domestic inflation spikes in Egypt during 2001-2011 were primarily the result of external food price shocks. To estimate the pass-through of international food price inflation to domestic price inflation, two different methodologies are used: a two-step regression model estimates the pass-through in the long run, and a vector autoregression model provides the short-run estimates. The empirical evidence confirms that pass-through is high in the short term, but not in the long run. More precisely, the results show that (i) long-run pass-through to domestic food inflation is relatively low, lying between 13 and 16 percent, while the long-term spill-over from domestic food inflation to core inflation is moderate, lying around 60 percent; (ii) in the short term, pass-through is relatively high, estimated around 29 percent after 6 months and around two-thirds after a year, but the spill-over effect to core inflation is limited; (iii) international food price shocks explain only a small portion of domestic inflation shocks in both the short and long terms; and (iv) international price inflation has asymmetric effects on domestic prices.

This paper aims to identify the nexus between the excess of liquidity in the United States and commodity prices over the 1983-2006 period. In particular, it assesses whether commodity prices react more powerfully than consumer goods' prices to changes in real money balances. Within a cointegrated vector autoregressive framework, the author investigates whether consumer prices and commodity prices react to excess liquidity, and if the different price elasticities of supply for goods and commodities allow for differences in the dynamic paths of price adjustment to a liquidity shock. The results show a positive relationship between real money and real commodity prices and provide empirical evidence for a stronger response of commodity prices with respect to consumer goods' prices. This could imply that, if the magnitude of the reaction is due the fact that consumer goods' prices are slower to react, then their long-run value can be predicted with the help of commodity prices. The findings support the view that the latter should be considered as a valid monetary indicator.

The Kyrgyz Republic's three party coalition has tackled a number of events during 2013, including mayoral elections in the country's biggest cities Bishkek and Osh road blockages around Kumtor, the country's largest gold mine; as well as tense negotiations on the future of the mine; and clashes in the south of the country. The government has navigated through these difficult times, quashing a motion of no confidence in parliament. An agreement between the Kyrgyz Republic and Centerra Inc. the majority stakeholder in Kumtor was accepted by parliament in early 2014. A surge in gold output and solid growth in the non-gold sectors contributed to an impressive 10.5 percent expansion of the Kyrgyz economy in 2013. Smaller increases in food prices than in recent years, and relatively stable energy prices helped bring inflation down. Expenditure controls and robust revenue outturns have brought the fiscal deficit down to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Preliminary estimates suggest the trade deficit and current account deficit remained high in 2013. Medium term growth is expected to moderate to 5 percent...